Natural Disasters Ravage China

In January 2008, severe snowstorms in eastern
and southern China killed at least 24 people. Half of the country's 31
provinces lost power, about 827,000 people were evacuated from their
homes, at least 600,000 train passengers were stranded, and some 20 major
airports were closed. The economic cost of the storm is projected to be
$3.2 billion.

In March, some 400 Buddhist monks participated
in a protest march in Lhasa to commemorate the failed uprising of 1959,
that resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing to India. The protests, the
largest in two decades, turned violent, with ethnic Tibetans reportedly
attacking Chinese citizens and vandalizing public and private property.
Chinese police used force to suppress the demonstrations. Tibetan leaders
said that more than 100 Tibetans were killed, but Chinese officials
claimed only 16 fatalities occurred and denied that police had used lethal
force. China barred many international news organizations from the country
and limited the flow of information out of the country. The demonstrations
and violence spilled into Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan Provinces in western
China. Chinese officials accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the
protests, a charge the spiritual leader denied. Zhang Qingli, Tibet's
Communist Party leader, reportedly called the Dalai Lama “a jackal
in Buddhist monk’s robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the
heart of a beast."

President Hu visited Japan in May and cited an
"everlasting warm spring" in relations between the countries. It was the
first visit by a Chinese head of state in a decade. While Hu and Japan's
prime minister Yasuo Fukuda failed to make progress on resolving a dispute
involving a gasfield in the East China Sea, they did agree to regular
meetings, signaling a thaw in their cool relationship.

At least 68,000 people were killed and thousands
injured when a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan
Provinces in western China on May 12. Nearly 900 students were killed when
Juyuan Middle School in the Sichuan Province collapsed. Several other
schools also collapsed, killing about 10,000 students. In addition, a
well-known panda reserve in Wenchuan was destroyed. The disaster was
further complicated by landslides in Sichuan Province that blocked rivers
and formed quake lakes that officials feared may cause devastating floods.
It was China's worst natural disaster in three decades. In September, the
Chinese government acknowledged that poor construction of hastily built
schools possibly contributed to their collapse in the earthquake.